


The Future Is Now (The Time Traveler’s Remix)

by smilebackwards



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Gen, M/M, Remix, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 21:59:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1485538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Eames is from, if you’re born in the wrong century, you can do something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Future Is Now (The Time Traveler’s Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dremiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dremiel/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Future is Now](https://archiveofourown.org/works/399106) by [dremiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dremiel/pseuds/dremiel). 



Eames meets Mal at the Dream Academy in Sartillo. Mal is from New Marseille and when she dreams it’s of Paris before the Atmo War: the Eiffel Tower a tall iron spike in the sky, the Champs-Élysées solid beneath her high heels. 

She’s the only one Eames ever shows his London, where Big Ben keeps Greenwich Mean Time and Tower Bridge is still trimmed in blue. They walk through St. George Chapel and Mal stands on a flagstone waiting for King George VII’s name and says, “Let’s do something about it,” like a dare.

It takes Eames two weeks to plan a raid on the Time Office. There’s a legal process of course, but it involves filling out innumerable forms and being fitted with a chrono tracker that’s rumored to cause a discreet aneurysm if you break a paradox rule. 

The day before the planned break in, Eames loses all communication with Mal. Her virtual ID disappears from the net and he tries all three of her comm links without success. He’s headed toward full-fledged panic, certain the Temporal Police have taken her, when there’s a tapping on his balcony window. The delivery drone flies off as Eames steps outside and bends down to scoop up the package. It’s wrapped in plain brown paper and has stamps over almost every inch of it, dating back centuries. Eames has a terrible suspicion as he tears it open. 

There’s a Time Watch inside and a postcard with the Eiffel Tower on the front. While Eames spent two weeks casing the office, Mal, it seems, spent two weeks packing and then twenty minutes flirting with a clerk. 

_Hurry up, it’s beautiful,_ Mal’s appalling penmanship reads. 

The watch hands are already set. May 21st, 2091. 2:12 am. Eames grabs his go bag and presses the trigger button.

Mal is waiting for him on a bridge over dark water. She kisses Eames’ cheek and shoves a coat at him. It looks antique, but the fabric is bright and new. “Put this on. You look ridiculous,” she says.

“And you look lovely, darling,” Eames returns, shrugging out of his too-vivid tunic. Everything around him feels strangely muted, pale stone in place of shining glass. Mal is elegant in linen and pearls. Eames glances at her pregnant belly, the sparkle of cubanite on her finger, and raises an eyebrow.

“I’ve sorted everything out,” Mal says, taking his arm and guiding him through the winding cobblestone streets, past a spacedock with B-400 freighters he’s only ever seen in museums and underneath the Eiffel Tower, lit with gold.

“Dominic Cobb?” Eames hisses after Mal leads him into a walk-up and introduces him to a squinty-eyed blond man Eames remembers from his Cognitive History textbook. 

“Hmm,” Mal hums agreeably, setting a non-hybrid orange in front of him. 

The door opens again and a man with dark hair and slim hips sets down a silver briefcase and hangs his coat on the rack.

“Who is that?” Eames asks, breathless.

“Oh,” Mal says with feigned casualness. “That’s Arthur.”

-

Eames once wrote a paper on Arthur Kessler. It was extremely short. The only thing any of the source materials could agree on was that he was one of the few original test subjects to survive the government’s shoddily designed dreamshare trials and that afterward, he’d disappeared into the criminal underground.

It wouldn’t have been enough to fascinate Eames without the picture. There were dozens of pictures of the trial laboratories, suspected marks and crime scenes, but only one picture of Arthur himself; young and dark haired, sitting in a portside café with a cup of coffee and a tablet, and smiling at the photographer in a way that made Eames wonder if he loved them, or would someday. Eames felt an odd tug on his heart.

He feels it again when Mal introduces him to Arthur in her moon-lit kitchen. “Arthur is our point man,” she says. “Arthur, Eames will be forging Lady Ami for us.”

Arthur narrows his eyes. “Forging?”

Mal and Eames share a swift _oh shit, have we invented dreamforge?_ look. “Let me show you,” Eames says. “Have you got pictures of her?”

The PASIV is a horrible mess of tubing and needles and Eames can’t believe he’s willingly letting Somnacin—which studies have proven to be essentially slow-acting poison—be pumped into his veins, but he thinks he’d do anything for Arthur not to look at him with impatient disdain.

Mal drops them into Madrid, in the shadow of the Weeping Monument. Eames knows enough history to know it won’t be built for sixty years yet. “This is why Dom is the architect,” Arthur says, shaking his head as he looks at the dripping stone. “All right, show me.”

Lady Ami is tall and willowy, with small pink lips and heartbreaking brown eyes. Eames sets her hair in a swept updo, a few tendrils creeping out to fall around her heart-shaped face. “Like what you see?” Eames asks, bringing a cigarette to her lips. He’ll have to get close to her in person to get the movement right and hear the tenor of her voice.

Arthur stares. “That’s…extremely useful."

Eames fades back into himself so he can give Arthur his own smile.

Arthur smiles back.

-

The job goes off without a hitch. 

Mal was always top of their class when it came to extraction. Eames forges Lady Ami and sits quietly on a stone bench in a winter garden while the mark stares at him with broken eyes and gives all his secrets like a confession. Arthur only has to shoot three projections. Eames watches him fire a vintage RX plasma gun with perfect precision, feeling a terrible swell of admiration. 

The take is enough for Eames to start his new life, but what Eames wants isn’t an apartment or a transport or even London.

Arthur is sitting in Eames new favorite café—where he goes to play holo cards and drink low end whisky—sipping coffee and reading _The Time Machine._ Eames feels a sudden sense of vertigo, time alignment or déjà vu. 

“D’you ever wonder if that’s going on right around us? Time travel and what not?” he asks, sitting down across from Arthur.

“You think we’re surrounded by time travellers?” Arthur says wryly, setting H. G. Wells aside.

Eames pulls out his camera phone. He knows this backdrop, the smile on Arthur’s face and in his eyes. “Of course not, darling,” Eames says, clicking the shutter. “That would be ridiculous.”


End file.
